ECCE: Cultural Geography (GBL 331)

When signing up for my final ECCE requirement (another topic which shall be discussed soon), I found a class which would fit my schedule, but was a little hesitant to sign up for it.

GBL 331 is taught by Dr. Frost-Kumpf. At first glance, I thought SHE might be German, and that her accent would be nearly impossible to decipher. Normally I enjoy trying to break down communication barriers, but in a class where your grade is dependent upon understanding the material, I haven’t the foggiest as to how I’d fare with a thick-accented professor. As it turned out, it was her married name (whew!). Professor Frost-Kumpf is a woman of short stature who, through her abounding energy and wealth of knowledge pertaining to the subject, keeps the topic of cultural geography at least interesting.

The hard part is reading the textbook. Nearly every chapter in the book consisted of 30+ pages. This may not sound like much, but if you have other classes with the same type of textbook, you’ll probably be spending the bulk of your semester reading. And to most students, reading textbooks is not a fun task. Furthermore, the 5 themes of the course (region, mobility, nature-culture, globalization, and cultural landscapes) are repeated so often, there were times when I didn’t know where to look in the textbook for key terms.

Another difficult aspect of this class was the midterm…but not for the reasons you might expect! The midterm offered by Professor Frost-Kumpf encompasses everything learned from the first day of class—from lectures and textbook readings to videos and audio files watched and listened to both inside and outside of class. If you simply pay attention, you’ll do fine. Prior to the test, we were given a full class day to review and get us geared up for the impending exam.

The difficulty was that most of the questions required short, short essay, or long essay answers. My problem was that I tended to write slowly, and I only had an hour and fifteen minutes to complete the test. However, she stated at the top of every page exactly what she expected answer-wise. I ended up getting 78%, but had I completed the three questions I didn’t get to, I conceivably could have had a 92%. Point is: write fast! NONE of the questions on the midterm or final are worded to trick you—they are all straightforward. Plus, there are opportunities to get a good 5 points or so of extra credit!

The papers required (a 1-2 page video recommendation and an 8-10 page current-events paper) are not that difficult to write if you allow yourself time to do the work. Get started early, FOLLOW THE RUBRIC, and there is NO reason why you should end up with anything less than an A.

While I felt at times that the course material tried too hard to show that cultural geography is relevant and necessary in life, a video watched during class has forever changed my life. But I will write about that tomorrow. For now, as long as ECCE is required, I’d recommend this course.